Freemake Video Converter

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Editors' Review

Freemake Video Converter is an application mainly for converting video files to other formats, but offers other converting and downloading features as well.

This application is a worthwhile download. The layout is very simple, making it easy to understand how to use it. Freemake offers a row of media buttons at the top and bottom of the window, which are labeled clearly and are simple to use. It is very easy to navigate the various steps required to convert videos and audio as well as download videos and audio from the Internet. The waiting time varies from one conversion job to the next, depending on the size and type. Converting a t3-minute audio file to MP3 can be done in less than a minute, while converting a 15-minute video to WMV can take over an hour and a half.

The program's Help pages are very good. The tutorials come with a short video as well as images which are very easy to understand. There seem to be a lot of hidden gems in this converter as well, such as a few editing features for videos and the ability to add subtitles to your videos when you rip them from your DVDs. You can also convert photos and have plenty of conversion options.

Lives to its promise of being free. Does its job well in converting videos. Video quality is great. Putting subtitles is easy, and it correctly displays subtitles, unlike other free video converters I tried.

Cons

The updates seem to add an advertisement or asks you to install other freemake products. I think this would be the only freemake product, along with their audio converter, that I would use. What annoys me is that the prompt or ad still doesn't disappear at the center of the program's UI even if I put files to be converted, thus there are some details I can't see, as it is covered by the ad.

Summary

Excellent video converter, I just hate the update with an advertisement, or you might call it something else, but for me it's an ad. I guess I would just downgrade.

Good basic functionalitySimple to use interfaceIncludes some basic editing - clip, rotate, flip etc.Doesn't seem to include malware

Cons

No colour enhancement/optimization controls.Can't use it to reduce resolution or colour depth during conversion. The install will change your homepage and install extras if you are not careful with the installation steps.

Summary

Work your way carefully through the install to avoid the junkware. Read the privacy policy - my OpenDNS confirmed that it was not hidden behind any anonymizer which was a good start.I've only used it for converting MOV to AVI and to MP3 but is is easy to use and worked well for these formats.The default settings do seem to a good job. I did not have a problem with it changing the resolution as others mentioned they had with other formats but I did not try those formats. It does do some sort of optimtzation/enhancement which I did not actually mind but some may find they want more control over this. If you want to control the colours and enhancement options during the conversion then this is not the product for you. But you should probably use a movie editor to do this sort of thing pre or post-conversion.It has some basic join and clip functions as well as an ability to queue up a batch of conversions.

Tried converting a 3G MKV movie to avi. Not only did it come out in the wrong resolution, but the audio was out of sync. It actually made the movie smaller at full screen.

Then I ran the same procedure through Ultra Video Converter and it worked perfectly first time. No out-of-sync audio, and no change of resolution you didn't ask for. And yes, I did follow the procedure to ensure it didn't go out of sync, but it did anyway.

They shouldn't feel bad though because some other converters I tried (like Digiarty MacX HD Video Converter Pro (which I got a free key for)) also made the audio/video go out of sync, and it provided poor video quality while still having a large size (2G). Ultra Video Converter made the file 956Mb, and the quality is excellent.

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